Michael Reuben
Senior HTF Member
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- Feb 12, 1998
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- Real Name
- Michael Reuben
As many of you know, I don't generally slam films. It's the rare film in which I can't find something to enjoy for all or most of its running time.
Well, I finally sat through one for which I truly wish I could get the time back.
Richard Linklater's Waking Life, which opened in limited release this week after playing the New York film festival, has been widely praised for its innovative animation techniques, which convert live action footage into very trippy cartoons that don't look quite like any others I've ever seen. I have no complaints about the creative imagery; it's about the only thing that kept me awake.
Unfortunately, the imagery is put in service of the most self-indulgent script Richard Linklater ever wrote (and considering his track record, that says a lot). For an hour and 40 minutes, you get to follow an unnamed protagonist through a surreal landscape that is probably a series of dreams within dreams within dreams. As in most other Linklater films, he encounters a series of people who talk . . . and talk . . . and talk . . . and talk. (In one particularly cruel moment, we come upon two characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, who sound like they're still carrying on that interminable conversation from Before Sunrise.)
The talk is insufferably pretentious -- loaded with high-falutin' ramblings on consciousness, dreams and perception, given to extensive name-dropping of the kind that most people outgrow by the end of college (Kierkegaard! Sartre! Bazin!), and laced with the kind of droning self-absorption that can be entertaining in an intense one-on-one conversation with a close friend but is deadly to have to listen to as an outsider.
The film is obviously attempting to say something profound about perception and reality, but it ends up dulling both.
As is probably obvious, I've never much cared for Linklater's films. I went to see this one because the reviews of the animation technique intrigued me. Someday I'd like to see those techniques placed in service of a real story and not something that looks like an egomaniac's graduate thesis masquerading as a film school project.
M.
[Edited last by Michael Reuben on October 19, 2001 at 08:03 AM]
Well, I finally sat through one for which I truly wish I could get the time back.
Richard Linklater's Waking Life, which opened in limited release this week after playing the New York film festival, has been widely praised for its innovative animation techniques, which convert live action footage into very trippy cartoons that don't look quite like any others I've ever seen. I have no complaints about the creative imagery; it's about the only thing that kept me awake.
Unfortunately, the imagery is put in service of the most self-indulgent script Richard Linklater ever wrote (and considering his track record, that says a lot). For an hour and 40 minutes, you get to follow an unnamed protagonist through a surreal landscape that is probably a series of dreams within dreams within dreams. As in most other Linklater films, he encounters a series of people who talk . . . and talk . . . and talk . . . and talk. (In one particularly cruel moment, we come upon two characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, who sound like they're still carrying on that interminable conversation from Before Sunrise.)
The talk is insufferably pretentious -- loaded with high-falutin' ramblings on consciousness, dreams and perception, given to extensive name-dropping of the kind that most people outgrow by the end of college (Kierkegaard! Sartre! Bazin!), and laced with the kind of droning self-absorption that can be entertaining in an intense one-on-one conversation with a close friend but is deadly to have to listen to as an outsider.
The film is obviously attempting to say something profound about perception and reality, but it ends up dulling both.
As is probably obvious, I've never much cared for Linklater's films. I went to see this one because the reviews of the animation technique intrigued me. Someday I'd like to see those techniques placed in service of a real story and not something that looks like an egomaniac's graduate thesis masquerading as a film school project.
M.
[Edited last by Michael Reuben on October 19, 2001 at 08:03 AM]
